cocopunk

I’ve been making some travel plans which has given me an excuse to once again look for a good camera. Specifically a good travel camera, meaning something compact and easy to use, but robust enough to justify carrying it around in addition to my phone. And digital, not film; I’m not crazy.

What is travel but a photography expedition? Do you think I want to go somewhere to “relax”? Reader, homie don’t play that.* More often than not, the sole purpose of going to a new place, for me, is to take some cool pics.

My first thought was the Sony RX100, which I heard from a videographer was surprisingly great. But even the oldest model RX100 goes for $200-$300 used (and newer models are >$1k). Not unreasonable for quality gear, but not trivial.

The YouTube recommendation algorithm knows me better than anyone (it knows that I’m cheap) and often serves me videos like “this crappy old camera I got for a dollar is actually amazing.” I wanted something in that vein: not necessarily the best, sharpest camera, but something distinctive and pocketable. In 2006 I used a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ2 while traveling in Europe and loved it; the zoom lens allowed for so many unique shots. But looking at those photos now, there is a distinctive early-2000s look to the images that just doesn’t cut it. Something about the noise and image processing from on a 5 megapixel sensor (the images on Flickr are 900×600, lol) date them as early 2000s. Aside from the lens, any modern iPhone looks better.

So that was my baseline. The problem, though, is that I didn’t want to spend much more than $100, and after doing some research, anything around that price is going to be similar to my 2006 camera. Until you get into the interchangeable lens stuff.

There are a lot of sub-DSLR cameras that can be found pretty cheaply, like an old Olympus Pen or other early micro four thirds cameras. (I’m not that familiar with the whole micro four thirds thing. Not that there is much to know; it’s just a smaller sensor standard that was adopted by a few companies.) And, of course, anything with an interchangeable lens isn’t really “pocketable.” They’re more ‘neck-strap-able’. Nonetheless, if you want a big sensor with decent lenses for cheap, that’s the direction you need to head in.

That’s when I came across the Nikon 1 Series. It is essentially Nikon’s answer to the micro four thirds standard, but Nikon’s version never really took off — which means they can be found for cheap. So I decided to try one out.

That’s a Nikon 1 J3, the third version of that model. It is pretty adorable. And almost pocketable! The body is tiny; my hands aren’t huge. With a smaller pancake lens, it would actually fit in a pocket.

But the lens it came with, the variable 10-30mm kit lens, just kind of sucks. It sucks so much I’m not sure if there’s something wrong with it. And the camera itself is kind of frustrating to use overall. This model was designed primarily as a point-and-shoot, so it doesn’t have quick access to all of the settings, which would be fine if it worked as desired! But it does not, and you really need to dive into the menus just to change the ISO or manually control the aperture or speed. I already knew this from reading reviews but figured it couldn’t be that bad. It is pretty annoying, though.

I was also caught off guard by how poor it performs in low light. Like, my apartment at 4pm was already too dark to take a photo without the flash. And because it was so dark to the sensor, the autofocus wouldn’t work. It couldn’t find focus in the dim afternoon light. Maybe I’m just spoiled by iPhones taking perfectly good photos at night.

Even in daylight the focus struggled. I’m not really sure what’s going on. Like this, for example — it took a dozen tries just to get the dog in focus without too much motion blur:

Which is weird because Nikon specifically touted the autofocus system of this camera and a lot of reviews assert how fast and good the autofocus is.

As a matter of comparison, here’s what a Nikon DX DSLR with a 35mm prime lens looks like. I love that lens:

Back to the Nikon 1 J3, its performance outdoors in direct sunlight wasn’t much better! It reminds of a plastic lens when fully zoomed in at 30mm:

The actual sensor (Nikon calls the format CX) is rather usable. It’s smaller than micro four thirds, but big enough to have plenty of pixels worth of light. Sometimes it looks good! It just takes dozens of tries to get there:

As an experiment, I used an adapter to try some F-mount DSLR lenses on the little guy. It’s not very practical, but it is a bit fun:

You can see how amusingly small the camera body is. But! This is just physical adapter; there’s no electronic connection between the lens and the camera, so all settings are completely manual. (There is a Nikon-made adapter that can control the lens but it’s way to expensive for just screwing around.)

Looks great though:

I think that was the Yongnuo 35mm again. (Using the bigger lenses also has a zooming effect when you mount it to the small sensor.) So we can see that the sensor indeed is quite good! Kind of maddening to manually focus based on the little, dim LCD screen, but still good. It’s that 10-30mm lens that looks bad. I’m still not entirely sure if there is something wrong with my lens in particular. (As it happens, they were actually recalled for a separate issue.)

It’s tempting to chase down another lens for the Nikon 1 series, like a 10mm, but that could cost more than the camera itself and I don’t want to pour more money into it. It’s not really that much more convenient than carrying a DSLR, anyway.

That is where I’m at! If anything, I might get a slightly newer camera body to replace my 2009 DSLR and just carry around a two-pound camera like a blockhead with the wrong priorities — the priority of getting cool pics.

*(Yes that is an In Living Color reference. In living color — like a photograph.)